E-book readers are shaping up to be a hot ticket when it comes to Android (s goog) devices. Barnes and Noble (s bks) has the Nook ready to ship, and readers from other vendors are expected early next year. Hopping on the bandwagon this week was network equipment maker Netronix, which is reportedly planning on making a reader based on Android. The company expects to ship a million of the devices in 2010, and will incorporate into them 3G and 3.5G capabilities.

While Android phone owners have been able to stream video to Ustream for a while now, they (strangely enough) weren’t able to view what they streamed on the phones themselves. The Ustream drought is now over, however, with this week’s appearance of the Ustream Viewer app in the Android Market. The new viewer works with all releases of Android currently in the wild: 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0.

Also revealed this week was a handheld Mobile Internet Device (MID) based on the ARM platform, one with a sliding QWERTY keyboard like many smartphones. The Inbrics MID has a AMOLED touch display, and adds Wi-Fi and GPS for added functionality.  Inbrics has indicated the new MID will be demonstrated at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in January.

In the meantime, a version of Google Maps Navigation, which adds turn-by-turn direction to Google Maps and was initially restricted to Android 2.0, was made available for Android 1.6. Some voice activation features are missing on this version, but it is fully functional otherwise.

So, I have made a few posts on here and some have been commented on, others have not. I am updating both this, and my blogger page with more or less the same content, but while the blogger page shows me visitors, followers and whatever else, I can’t tell if anyone is even reading this. Or more to the point, if you are reading it, are you enjoying it? At the moment I am in two minds as to whether or not to keep this one going. The blogger page is going really well, but this one seems to be falling by the wayside and I dont see the point in updating it if nobody is reading.

Anyways, I guess that is all I wanted to say. If you are reading, feel free to drop me a comment and cheer me up. At least if you think it is worth me carrying it on.

Ryan

I don’t think anyone can go to New Orleans and not leave without out at least having her cards or palm read. Psychics and readers abound, with a few of the more daring souls having set up shop with their folding chairs in front of the venerable old St. Louis Cathedral. As prognostication is a black art and usually frowned on by the church, I thought I’d play it safe and have my cards read around the corner on Royal Street.  But not before stopping into the old Cathedral, lighting a candle, saying a prayer, and making the perfunctory “first time” wish – granted to all Catholics every time we visit a new church.

Talk about hedging my bets.  Hey, we’re talking cards here, right?

Play the hand you're dealt

I took the cards and shuffled the deck and laid out my choices before Shelley the Seer.  As I turned a card over and saw the very scary face of what looked like the devil – I wondered if I could trade in a few cards for a better hand.  I asked Shelly, and she told me, “This isn’t poker you know. You play the hand you’re dealt.”  Okay, okay I thought.  This is why God doesn’t allow us to see around corners, and why shortcuts to the future are only for fun.

Shelley gave me a dream reading, one that all single women would love to hear. The scary card was actually my karma card – uh oh!   And the card that went with it – some sort of tree with lots of branches – foretold a new love … a love like no other with someone I would recognize the moment I finally met him.  It was someone from a past life and thus the connection to karma. But she warned me that I had to be open.

What me, not open?  Of course I’m open – you only have to look at my recent dating / relationship history to see that I was perhaps a bit too open.  Upon further reflection, however, it occurred to me that there is a big difference between being open and being available.  And now fate was presenting me with a good opportunity to learn the difference.

In this case, being open meant looking at all of the possibilities regardless of who they were.  And since I have been wandering in a non-dating desert for several months now, any karmic strangers appearing on the horizon now would be hard to miss.  All I had to do was meet him for the first time – again.

The reading made me think of the newly released song, “I Just Haven’t Met You Yet” by Michael Buble.  It’s a love song about being open to the possibilities despite previous set backs in love.  It’s a song about keeping the faith with yourself and with the whatever the universe, or God, has in store.

Who knows if it’s really the cards or the candle that dictates one’s fate?   In the end it doesn’t really matter.  What does matter is the belief that secret hopes or silent prayers are always answered.  Perhaps it might not be in the way Shelley or I had imagined, but hey that’s the future for you; it’s always full of surprises.

Thanks to all the Marvelous Girls who’ve helped this blog reach 200,000 hits in less than a year!  Couldn’t have done it without you.

XOXO,
Marvelous Girl

There are many things I am thankful for and to name them all would take way to much of your time and you would probably get really bored sitting through the post. So as I spend this thanksgiving day with my family and enjoy a great meal and great company I wanted to personally say to the readers of george tallmage talks that I thank you. Some of you I have the privilege of knowing personally, but also realize that many of you I have never met. Thanks for your time in reading what I post and for your input and lessons that you have in life by commenting. While I take a break today and focus solely on my friends and family that will be gathering at our house I didn’t want to leave you out. So, as I think about what I am thankful for includes; My wife Chanelle, my children Peyton and Julianna, top the list. I am thankful for a great family, and some pretty awesome friends. I am also thankful for you. Though we may never meet in person, thank you for stretching me through your comments, and taking part in my journey, thank you for reading, commenting, and to those of you who have subscribed via email or the rss feed. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Thanks for stopping by, the only thing missing is your voice. Join the conversation by leaving a comment. You can also Share this post or Subscribe to george tallmage talks by clicking one of the appropriate icons.

It surprises me how people is actually reading my notes. Despite the fact that maybe they didn’t leave any comments under my writings, but when they met me in person and told me about my writings, the feeling is beyond words. Some of them left me messages through inbox and it still fascinates me that people is really reading my notes.

I am still finding my writing style. So far, I am comfortable with columnist writing style: pick up theme from my real daily experiences, put some drama, add a little humor and sarcasm, with a nice conclusion. That has been my formula to make my writings.

Of course I like to write poems and sometimes I add my drawings as well. Hmm… Drawing is my another obsession! But I am not an expert nor good at this, I just found that my drawings look pretty nice and hope I can unify both my writings and drawings together someday. Actually I did that sometime.

I watch movies, I listen to songs, I read my friends’ writings and those are how I get my self inspired. I’m pretty lucky that I surrounded by best friends who have the same interest as mine and I have to admit, I learn so much from them. And not like other writers, I don’t have any favorite author. I am just concern if the liking feeling of one author will affect my writing style as well. None wants to be seen as a copy-cater. Moreover, I also detach myself from being too judgmental about something and be really careful for not get trapped in a patronizing style – you and me are in the same level, none is smarter than another.

I fully understand that my writings are far from perfection: typos, grammar problems, bad topic, boring plots, horrible conclusions, etc… I am sorry for that and I’m working at my best to improve myself. However please please please please don’t give up on me please!!

Lastly, for all the beginners [like me] out there, keep ourself motivated to read and write in daily basis. That is the only way we can be better, every time. Don’t listen to our mind if it thinks we have enough, just trust in our heart and never give up. Especially when people ask us to stop and tell us about how bad your writing is – they don’t know us! So keep on writing…

Because I do, always have and always will.

Bunch of loves..

Claudie

Earlier, I posted the news that Amazon will be updating the Kindle’s firmware to add functionality to my beloved ebook reader.  Everyone thought that the update will come next year but a few minutes ago, I received an email from Amazon informing me that the update is now ready.

Knowing that I have crappy Whispernet access here at home, I opted to do update manually.  Downloading and updating the Kindle took less than 15 minutes.  After a rather lengthy restart, I uploaded a PDF file to my Kindle and it can now read the file without any need for conversion!  Pressing the font-resize button also allows me to read ebooks in landscape mode.  This will probably come in handy when reading “wide” PDF documents.

The only thing that I have not yet tested is the purported longer battery life.

Now, if only they add native ePub support, I’ll be a happy puppy.

Excuse me while I curl up in bed and read…

 Janusz Leon Wisniewski, a Polish physicist, chemist and novelist who is famous in Vietnam for two of his works of fiction, “Loneliness on the Net” and “Lover”, has met his Vietnamese readers from Nov. 20-24.

He wrote “Loneliness” to fight the sadness of his private life and did not intend to publish. “All of a sudden, my novel Loneliness on the Net was released in 2001 and I first saw it at a bookstore in Torun, Poland,” said the 55-year-old. The novel was eventually published in 11 countries, he added.

“I think scientists have deeper romantic emotions than those who work for social duties. Although I don’t have any ability to invent a story, I collect from experience and real life,” Wisniewski told the Daily.

Author Janusz Leon Wisniewski in the meeting with Vietnamese readers on Saturday.

One of the best-selling modern novels out of Poland, “Loneliness” is about virtual love, sadness, desperation, loneliness, beliefs, flirtations on the Internet, wine, jazz and DNA. “This book is like a song that honors brainpower and knowledge. Loneliness exists from the bottom of every heart, especially of educated people, but all people wish happiness and hunger for love,” said Le Hoang Anh, representative of Youth Publisher and editor of the translations of Wisniewski’s “Loneliness” and “Lover”.

“Loneliness is a horrible illness. The more our society and telecommunication systems develop, the more people feel lonely. The book reflects reality,” Wisniewski said.

“Loneliness” was adapted into a dramatic film with Russian actors in February and it has been welcomed every night at one of the largest theaters in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Translated by Nguyen Thi Thanh Thu and published in Vietnam in 2006, “Loneliness” was reissued seven times with over 10,000 copies sold and “Lover” went into third edition with over 6,000 copies sold as of 2008, Hoang Anh told the Daily.

The author is making his first visit to Vietnam at the invitation of the Polish Embassy in Vietnam and Youth Publisher. He goes to Australia today, November 24.

Bookmark & Share

I created an FB group for local Kindle users.  If you already own a Kindle, or is planning to get one, or if you simply want to learn more about the Kindle, join me at Kindle Philippines.

Photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

- Robert Frost

Alexis Rhone Fancher

All Rights Reserved

© 2009

Thanks for reading, people!

Please, again, don’t be afraid to comment here. Dave does. He’s still alive. Kristin and Mike have. They’re OK too.

Interestingly, it shows me that someone has searched for my email address. Ha ha ha. Also some other cool info there. Neat.

.seitilibasid gninrael fo nuf ekam ot ynnuf ton yllaer s’tI

My 3rd book, Surviving Hostage Situations, was turned down by 35 publishers. Those who were kind enough to explain why had a common theme: No one likes to think about the bad things that can happen to them. They were correct, but as an intelligence professional who lived for contingencies, I really didn’t understand that attitude. So, that experience plus the bad publisher experiences convinced me to self-publish. This was fortunately the same time I acquired a Mac clone made from a Mac mother board and a PC case. I also acquired Page Maker software and entered the dizzy world of book design. I eventually sold 5,000 of these in English and 2,000 in German through a German publisher of a military magazine in Düsseldorf, Germany.

I also acquired rights to a Army Promotion Board study guide written by an Army education specialist. That became my cash cow. The first order for that little manual came from the European Stars and Stripes bookstore system in Germany. Their initial order was for 5,000 copies. The catch was it would be 6 months before they would pay. I had just paid out of my own pocket for 1,000 copies each of the hostage book and the study guide. I was tapped out of cash and credit.

I went to our bank across the street seeking a $15,000 line of credit to print more books based on the study guide order. After they finished chuckling, they said they’d be happy to set one up if I 2nd mortgaged my bookstore building. I didn’t really have a choice, so I did it. That study guide eventually sold 25,000 copies and funded the printing of several other books.

I took on one other book by an author other than myself–an exercise book by a Marine officer who combined traditional physical exercises with visualization exercises. It was a flop. Traditional exercise adherents thought it was too airy fairy. New Age readers thought it was too traditional.

The next book was Close Quarters Combat for Police and Security Forces. It was the non-lethal version of Survival on the Battlefield. It sold about 3,000 copies, but was never as popular as the military manual.

In 1992, after double knee operations, I had recuperation time on my hands. I wrote and typeset 126 pages of my next book, Military Knife Fighting. A month later, my Korean son, Patrick, and I went into the photographer’s studio with my 14-year-old daughter, Desiree, who was my script girl. She read each technique’s captions, and Pat and I went from pose to pose. We took over 350 pictures in an hour, completely blowing the photographer’s mind. That book became another cash cow. In the BEA held in Miami, I obtained a table at the Military Book Show held in conjunction. Doubleday’s Military Book Club editor, Moshe Feder, looked over my books and signed me up for Survival on the Battlefield and Military Knife Fighting. They both became best sellers for the book club, selling over 25,000 copies. I didn’t make as much money per book; however, they used my printer and allowed me to order copies on the same print run. Instead of paying for books at the 1,000-2,000 copy price range, I could piggyback along with Doubleday’s 5,000 book printing, getting the 6,000-7,000 per book price, which was much cheaper. Economy of scale is a great thing.

Marketing became my primary focus. I met and made friends with the editors of men’s magazines such as SWAT, Soldier of Fortune, American Survival Guide, and Fighting Knives Magazine. They began giving me very positive reviews in their magazines. I in turn paid for display ads and classified ads, building up my direct marketing business. I began writing anti-New World Order books and became a popular interviewee on talk radio–so much so, that I was offered my own radio show–a 5 day a week hour-long show called the preparedness hour. With that ready-made marketing venue, I put together a 200-book mail order catalog operation and performed all operations myself, invoicing, picking, packing, wrapping, mailing, and inventory management. I was also traveling all over the US giving workshops and selling books at survivalist and book trade shows.

By 1997, I was completely burned out after 8 years of 12-18 hour days. I gave all 8,000 of my catalog customers a month’s warning and pulled the plug. This had been a 1-man endeavor and I couldn’t do it any longer. I never had time for writing. It had all become a full-time job of marketing.

After a 2-year hiatus of college to gain music teacher certification in the State of Kansas and 2 more years of teaching all subjects at our Juvenile Detention Center, I pulled the plug on that and began Heartland Reviews on line. I saw so many books submitted that weren’t ready for publication, that I began offering editing and designing services as a book packager.

Today I am focusing on writing fiction and helping self-publishers and small presses. At age 64, I am slowing down a little, but helping people has always been foremost in my mind. Thus ends how I fell into the wacky world of self-publishing.

Let me start with a little promo – The book trailer contest is very close. I’m currently second, but only one vote separates first, second and third. So if you have time, I’d really appreciate you hopping on over to “You Gotta Read Videos” and vote for my book trailer “Up on the Housetop” (Video #20). Thanks so much!

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

I’m sure many of you have heard by now about a little thing I’m going to call the “Harlequin Fiasco.”

Last week was a busy week for Harlequin. Press releases were tossed around, articles were written, and people voiced their opinions about some of the new business ventures of this publishing giant.

I thought it would be interesting and take a step back from all of the emotional upheaval and recap exactly what  has been happening over the past couple of weeks.

First, Harlequin announced the opening of a new ebook line, called Carina Press. Carina is latin for “keel of a ship.” According to wikipedia, a ship’s keel is the first part to be crafted, and is the structural support or skeleton upon which the rest of the ship is built.  Pretty lofty expectations for an epress, wouldn’t you say?

They hired some internal Halrequin editors and Angela James, a well-known editor and advocate of ebook publishing, to be a part of their team. They opened submissions to all romance genres and even some genres outside of romance. Finally they announced that they would begin selling books this fall.

As far as I could tell, the press release got a luke warm reception. Some lauded Harlequin as being visionaries, loving the idea of opening the Harlequin market to authors who don’t fit the more traditional lines. Others worried that Carina Press’ business model would eventually penetrate Harlequin’s more established lines, leaving authors without advances that, up until now, had been paying their rent. Still more authors were concerned about their “no DRM” model (translate: ebooks from them won’t be encrypted if bought through their website) and how potentially making it easier to file share and pirate books would affect sales. Finally people speculated about how much Harlequin really believed in this epress. Although the press would be advertised in the eharlequin community, the Harlequin name would be nowhere on the books or in the marketing. The editors insisted in their FAQ that this line was totally separate from the rest of the publishing house.

That, in and of itself, would be news enough. But Harlequin wasn’t done yet.

Last week a second announcement was made about Harlequin partnering with Author Solutions to form a new line: Harlequin Horizons. For the sake of brevity, let’s put aside all of the rumors that Author Solutions is an unscrupulous company to do business with and focus on the joint venture itself.

Although both Author Solutions and Harlequin claimed this imprint to be a self-publishing press (definition here), it is  a  vanity press (definition here). Unlike other, more conventional publishers, a vanity press makes its money off of the authors who buy their services, not  book sales. While an author pays to publish with self-publishing and with vanity presses, with self-publishing the author  gets to keep the copyright to their work and receives 100% of the royalties. Not true for vanity presses, where the press keeps the ISBN number and the author would only get a fraction of royalties. In the case of Harlequin Horizons, the author gets 50%, while Author Solutions and Harlequin take the other 50%. (An excellent breakdown of different types of publishers can be found in the Examiner’s article on this subject, found HERE.)

So what’s the big deal?

It’s not the opening of the press that upsets people so much as how the press is being marketed to authors.  Harlequin Horizons claims that if your books sales are high enough, you *may* be picked up and published through Harlequin proper. Harlequin also announced that it will include a standard paragraph in all of its form rejections suggesting that aspiring authors not work on improving their craft, but instead try publishing with their vanity line. If their sales are good enough, maybe, just maybe, Harlequin will reconsider.

There was also concern that authors published through Harlequin Horizons would be able to call themselves Harlequin authors, thus diluting the name brand that Harlequin worked so hard to build up. 

 These claims (and some outrageous pricing) led to a firestorm of opinions all over the blog-o-sphere. The most widely read, IMHO, where at Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  It was like watching a train wreck. Some speculated that Halrequin’s parent company, Torstar, was trying to monetize the slush pile. Others were nervous that Harlequin would set a precedent and that soon many other publishers will start using vanity presses as vetting mechanisms for their slush, forcing aspiring authors to “pay to play” if they ever hope to be published by more traditional venues.

The news even made its way into the New Yorker. The use of the term “bodice-rippers” in this article generated even more comments suggesting that with one single press release, Harlequin had managed to undo years of hard work building credibility for the romance  industry.

This all lead to announcements from RWA , MWA and SFWA, each slapping Harlequin’s hand for the opening of this new line. In brief, they each removed Halrequin from their eligible publishers lists, stripping the romance giant and its authors of many of the rights they used to enjoy.

Authors all over weighed in on the issue, including Nora Roberts, Shiloh Walker, Ann Aguirre, and Jackie Kessler (Jackie has a great summary of the debacle on her blog. If you haven’t read it, you should). Outspoken reader blogs like Teddypig and industry blogs like Galleycat spoke out about the deal. Agents like Janet Reid, Ashley Grayson  and Jennifer Jackson offered their opinions, as did editors like one from  Juno Books.  Business analysts weighed in, one of them stating that publishing houses need to adopt models like this or risk going the way of the dinosaur. Victoria Strauss, from Writer’s Beware, offered her thoughts. Even a brave Harlequin employee  spoke out about it. (And that was all of the links I could find in under ten minutes. I know there are more. If you have one, include it in the comment section for our readers!)

Everyone had an opinion, and as the week went on, I learned that this model wasn’t new. Michael Hyatt has already enetered a similar agreement with his publishing company, Thomas Nelson, and blogged some interesting arguments defending Harlequin’s decision. (Although, I must say, he calls Harlequin Horizons  ”self publishing” and, according to the wikipedia definition, Harlequin’s deal with Author Solutions creates a vanity press, not a self-publishing enterprise.)

Predators and Editors alerted its readers of the vanity press and Writers Beware warned of the pitfalls of choosing Harlequin Horizons to publish your work. This news was so big that the New York Times even wrote an article about it.

Harlequin finally offered a response, saying that it will remove its name, but not its support, from the Halrequin Horizons line. (Although going to their website shows they have yet to do anything.) This is a good first step, but many are saying it’s not enough. They would also like to see Harlequin change their form rejection letters to remove the paragraph directing unsuspecting authors to the vanity press.

So what’s should we, as writers and readers, take away from all of this?

In short, do your homework.

If you are a reader, be aware that Harlequin Horizons — or whatever they are going to call themselves in the future – doesn’t have the normal vetting and editing of their books that is seen with print and epublishers. In contrast to their more traditional lines, when you buy a Harlequin Horizon, the quality of the work will be variable.  That’s not to say that they will all be bad, but many won’t meet Harlequin’s high standards for their category lines — especially if Harlequin proper is directing their rejected manuscripts there.

If you are a writer, please do your research before submitting your beloved manuscript to any publisher. Whether you choose print, epub, self-pub or vanity press, do your due diligence. While there are many reputable presses out there, there are also many unscrupulous people looking to make a quick buck. Don’t trust a single source. Follow industry blogs, run a google search, read books from the presses you want to publish with. Stalk websites like predators and editors. Educate yourself about the ins and outs of the publishing business. Join professional organizations like RWA,  SFWA, or MWA (depending on the genre). Talk to people in the industry. Remember that as a general rule of thumb, money should always flow to the author, not from the author. If you publish a novel and end up in the red, then you didn’t do something right. Learn from your mistakes. Evaluate your strategy and adjust. Learn your craft.  And most of all… write with your heart, but submit with your head.

This fiasco isn’t over yet, I’m sure. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, especially how this will affect the RWA national conference, the eligibility of Harlequin authors for RWA events and contests, and the grand opening of Carina Press this fall.

The Beginning

Back in the early 1970’s, I served in South Korea with the US Army Intelligence. I spent 3-5 hours a day 4 days a week studying the Korean fighting art of Hapkido (a mixture of Korean Karate and Japanese Jujitsu). Unlike Judo, we had no reference manuals; however, the art had over 1,000 techniques. I decided to write a definitive manual. In 1974 and 75 I posed with fellow students for technique pictures and wrote all the text. In 1976, I was stationed at Ft Huachuca, AZ. I submitted my proposal to Rainbow Publications (Black Belt Magazine). They turned it down because they had just published a Hapkido manual by the Korean actor, Bong Soo Han, who had been in the Billy Jack Movies. It was poorly written by a ghost writer, but they depended on Bong’s name selling the book. The word quickly got around the martial art community that it was poorly written, so it didn’t sell well.

Although I sent proposals in to other martial art publishers over the years, hoping than my credentials as the 1st non-Korean to attain a 3rd Dan black belt and instructors certification would make me acceptable. No luck, so I put it on a back shelf and got busy with other things.

In 1985, I attended an American Booksellers Association Expo (now called the BEA) and met with editors from Rainbow Publications and the second largest MA press, Unique Publications (Inside Kungfu Magazine). This time I was able to establish credibility and was asked to submit. Rainbow turned me down again because they didn’t want to compete against their own book. Unique accepted, and I finally had a foot in the door.

Two months before an assignment to Munich, Germany in 1986, I mentioned to them I had an idea for a military fighting manual based on Hapkido and other arts. They got excited, since they had nothing for the military in their backlist, and asked me to go ahead. I wrote it in the next 6 weeks and then flew out to Burbank, CA on my own dime to honcho a photo session with their models. The night before the shoot at dinner, my editor told me I had to eliminate half of the techniques. That was a huge amount of stress to sacrifice half of my book overnight, but I did. The next day, despite an ear infection and a 103 degree fever, I coached the models through the remaining techniques and flew home the next day to get doctored up before driving my van across country to ship it from NJ to Germany.

In 1987, I received a box of my 2nd book, Survival on the Battlefield: A Handbook to Military Martial Arts. They had decided to publish it first and never gave me a chance to review the proofs, so I didn’t have the opportunity to correct technical mistakes they made. The next year, the same thing happened with Hapkido: The Integrated Fighting Art, except it was much worse. Instead of issuing a 2-volume set of every technique from white belt to 2nd degree black belt, they decided to issue a broad brush overview, cutting out techniques but not editing out references to these poor dead spirits. On top of that, the cover was ugly. I was heart-sick. It was like seeing my baby stillborn.

At the time, I was touring Germany on the weekends doing author signings and appearing on a TV talk show on AFN. I was advertising in GI magazines. I finally decided that my third book, Surviving Hostage Situations, would be published by me. My experiences with the major niche publisher and reading Dan Poynter’s wonderful self-publishing manual gave me the courage to make that decision. I arrived back in Kansas in 1989 just in time to pick up my first 1,000 copies of my third book from the printer. My next post will address how my press, Universal Force Dynamics Publishing, came to be and why it became a success.

One thousand and two times someone came to this blog. Out of curiosity. Out of familiarity with the eclectic, quirky style of the writer. Out of incredulity that anyone actually spent the tme to get such odd results. Ha! Frankly I can’t imagine why 1002 hits registered on this blog when so few people even know it’s around!

Thank you, whoever you are. People who read it and tell me, an even bigger thanks to you!

The horned Moses, inspiration for my blog self-portrait, above!

This blog started as an experiment. It is meant to keep my mind engaged during my retirement years, to give my hands purpose. It works well toward those goals! But I didn’t realize it would be a documentation of the process rather than then process itself, which makes it- this blog – a happy surprise!

I have no idea what I will write about to take this blog to 2000 hits. If you are a faithful reader of this blog, I hope what I write till then is, for you, a happy surprise, too!

By Ryan Chapman, Internet Marketing Manager, Macmillan

A lot of the discussion about eBooks tends to frame the format in absolutist and misleading terms.

“It will destroy print.”

“It will devalue the book.”

We shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming a growing new format will upend the entire industry (remember the fear concerning audiobooks?). The format will dictate the content and this makes for one of the most exciting shifts in the industry since the rise of mass-market paperbacks.

I bring up mass-markets as an analogy and a precedent. Could you imagine pitching the concept to publishers? “It’s a smaller trim size, printed on cheap paper, and we’ll charge a third of the hardcover price. Yes, hardcovers are beautiful objects, but we think there’s a big opportunity here in treating our books as disposable commodities.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if industry pessimists back then expressed the same fears of cannibalized sales and devalued content that they do now regarding eBooks.

Mass-markets defined their own readership (at airports and supermarkets) and genres (commercial and genre fiction); you don’t see biographies or political nonfiction in this format. Of the current top 20 bestsellers on the New York Times’ Paperback Mass-Market Fiction list, 8 have never been published in hardcover (disregarding the large-print hardcovers for Snow Angels and Hot on Her Heels).

The eBook format is no different. After the digital transition, we’ll find that certain books fit an eBook audience, while others are meant for print. Personally, this year I purchased hardcovers that I would never buy as an eBook (Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice), and vice versa (Steve Knopper’s Appetite for Self-Destruction).

Of course there will be overlap. Of course there will be outliers. It’s foolish to think this will be cut and dry on either side.

Thankfully, the publishing industry will be able to weather this transition with greater ease than at previous inflection points. Returning to our analogy, a mass-market pilot program for a major publisher would have required a significant amount of capital for market research and R&D. Not anymore. A lot of traditional market research tools have become affordable (if not free) in their digital forms. Creating consumer surveys, testing book covers, sampling book fairs (for the YA market), etc. Publishers leveraging their direct-to-consumer channels will gain unprecedented reader data at much less cost than in the past.

In the digital transition, we’ll stumble and fall more than once. Harlequin felt this recently with the warm reception for their Carina Press announcement, and the cold shoulder Harlequin Horizons received a week later. But now we can “fail fast forward,” informed with real-time reader response to determine what readers want and in which formats.

The data will most certainly run counter to our guesswork and opinions.

Bowker’s Kelly Gallagher has noted eBook consumption favors fiction over nonfiction at a rate disproportionate to print. (We’ll learn more during his Digital Book World presentation, “Today’s eBook Consumer: A Look at First-Round Data from BISG’s On-Going Survey of Consumer Attitudes Toward eBook Reading.”) Is this significant of eBook habits overall, or merely the behavior of the early adopter community? How much of this is determined by the device?

Reading on a dedicated ereader is different than reading on the iPhone or PC; this too will determine purchasing behavior in the coming year. e.g.: I can embed links to YouTube videos and relevant URLs in my ePub, which, for the right title, makes it a more attractive media property on the iPhone than the Kindle.

Just as 40% of New York Times mass-market bestsellers have never seen the traditional hardcover format, I predict that by this time next year we’ll see a trade title flourish as an eBook, with little or no print support. I’m not talking about Stephenie Meyer selling 10K copies of the Twilight iPhone app, but a word-of-mouth hit operating solely within this new market. Maybe it’ll be a thriller encouraging readers to seek out YouTube content; or an extremely topical work of satire pushed to market at twice the speed a printed book can be crashed.

We know all change is disruptive, and in an industry with thin profit margins that can be scary as hell. It may get worse before it gets better.

Whatever happens, though, I find it’s a thrilling time to be in publishing.

Ryan Chapman works for Macmillan as an internet marketing manager. In January he’ll transition to working exclusively with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. You can follow him on Twitter at @chapmanchapman or on his blog.

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The slide in ad revenues in the newspaper industry continued in the third quarter of this year, as the NAA numbers show a 28 percent decrease in the third quarter of 2009.  It’s the 13th consecutive quarter of declines and prospects for the worst year for ad revenues in more than 20 years.

While the reality looks bleak, NAA officials saw a silver lining. “”There may not be great visibility into 2010 and beyond, but the broad consensus is that the worst has passed,”  NAA president John Sturm said. “Throughout the downturn, newspaper companies have made extraordinary progress in transforming their business models, positioning themselves as leading players in a multiplatform media universe where their superior audience engagement, content generation, and value for advertisers will ensure a successful future.”

Newspapers have been throwing people and products overboard over the past several years to lighten the load to stay afloat. But now they are selling their slimmed down products as a “multiplatform media universe?”

Looks more like lipstick on a pig.

Through the recession, publisher still haven’t address building readership and community that adapt and conform to new readers’ styles. Publishers are still focusing on building mass audiences for single products, when readers are turning their backs to “mass” packages. I look at my iPhone and see missed opportunities to build revenue through a specialized product (most newspapers are giving away their iPhone apps, which is a shame. It could have been a great revenue opportunity.)

Instead of making one “universal” product,  publishers should be instead be focusing on smaller products and delivery methods targeted for microcommunities. Build enough focused products and readers, and you can have a larger cumulative audience than you had with your ‘mass’ product … plus each one has potential for growth.

Build readers, and advertisers will follow. Target audiences, and you’ll get advertisers you may not have attracted before.

But, in the meantime, Rome continues to burn.

UPDATE, NOV. 28:  Alan Mutter, in his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, shares the sentiment that the numbers continue to spiral down, and offers some interesting stats to back it up. Click here to read.

Sorry about the Sunday post… AGAIN. Fridays keep blowing up in my face, mostly in good but terribly busy ways.

So the other night my husband and I went to a local place called Taco Stand which serves…. wait for it… tacos! Delicious tacos! It’s cheap, tasty, and very popular with families (what kid doesn’t like tacos?). This makes for a weird mix of townies and students, groups that are normally oil and water in our little University town, but it also means I run into people I don’t normally see. Unfortunately, this mixing has a bad habit of spawning the “what are you doing now, oh you have a book coming out!” conversation I thought (back before I was published) I would love having, but in reality is always pretty awkward given most people’s vague notions of fantasy and weird ideas about how authors spend their time.

This particular night I ran into a woman I used to work with at the church (my first job out of college as a designer/receptionist and, coincidentally, where I wrote my first novel), named Tami. Even though Tami was older than me and a mother with kids, we were cohorts in the trenches at our job, fighting against the pretty terrible decisions of those above us, and I always enjoyed her company. But, other than work stuff, I didn’t know her or her husband very well, always thought of them as a fairly conservative couple. So, while I was happy to see her looking so well, I was pretty anxious when she came up to say hello after four years and the “what are you doing now” conversation came up. I took the cheat way out and just told her I had a book coming out. Fortunately she had a tray full of tacos headed towards a table of hungry children, so the conversation was truncated and I fled to the other side of the room, safe (I thought) from having to explain yet again that no, my book was not Harry Potter or Twilight or Eragon.

Fifteen minutes later as my husband and I are walking out, Tami stops us. My heart sinks. Here it comes. I can almost see the Oprah question in her eyes. She asks what kind of book I wrote. I tell her fantasy, and to my utter amazement, Tami and her husband are immediately excited. What kind of fantasy? Epic like George R.R. Martin? Urban? Her husband lights up as he tells us how much he loves Joe Abercrombie and how upset he is that Patrick Rothfuss hasn’t put out a second book yet. Tami’s asks who I’m getting published by, and when I tell her Orbit she knows exactly who I’m talking about and tells me she loves their stuff.

At this point, my mind is blown. Here is this woman I worked with for a year, whom I thought I knew as a conservative small town lady with her husband who owns the local office furniture store, more likely (I thought) to read Rachael Ray than ever read Rachel Aaron, and they’re asking me what fantasy books mine is like. What new books can I recommend? Will my book be suitable for their 10 year old, who is already an avid fantasy fan? (My books are not YA, but they have no cussing or sex, just bloody swordfights, so I said maybe to that one. Tami assured me they’d both read it first, and I actually believe they will.)

In the end my husband had to pull me away from the conversation so we wouldn’t be late for our party. Still, I got a very valuable lesson about making assumptions about people, their reading habits, and my future audience. When I wrote my books, the reader I had in my head were people like myself and my husband – geeks, gamers, internet nerds, people who wrote fanfiction in highschool, etc., etc. But there are fantasy readers out there who never go to cons, get involved in geek culture, or even consider themselves geeks. They just like a good fantasy story.

Being so deeply involved in geek culture it’s easy to forget that there are people outside the bubble who buy the same books I do. Who may buy my book if they come across it. Fortunately, this encounter was a very gentle wakeup call and not the foot-in-mouth disaster it could have been. Still, lesson learned.

“Re electronic books: I fail to see why authors care about the manner in which their words reach the eyeballs of readers. Great art always survives.  [. . . ] A great editor, a great publicist are all that is needed for a great book to find its audience.”

This interesting comment, posted to a blog about the recent NBA winners, caught our attention.

Great art survives precisely because artists care about the presentation.  Would it still be great art if the Mona Lisa had a beard?  All you’re doing it altering the appearance.  No, you’d be defacing the original creation.  But you could enlarge the image, to make it more accessible to the vision impaired.

Words, their presentation through fonts and formating, are for many writers an explicit expression of some aspect of the story and something that influences the read.  Would you want to read Mark Twain in helvetica?  It would be a total disconnect with the subject matter, plus sans-serif fonts are more difficult to read.

Does a great book need to be worked over by a great editor? Or  touted by a great publicist to find an audience? Harry Potter started with a print run of 100 books and sold in one small local bookshop. Word of mouth made it what it became.  Readers decide what books are great.

And to that end, the people’s choice this year . . . Flannery O’Connor  – born & raised in America, a woman, and a religious one at that.  And yet the book awards had no born & raised American authors, women authors, or religious lit books on their top 10 list to pick a winner from. Interesting.

photo credit: News Corpse flikr.com

North Carolina, the home to whacky, senile, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, (reincarnation of Jesse helms), is having a guest and suppressing free speech at the same time on a US army base! Ft. Bragg is going to be having a book signing, at first it was not allowing media at all, can you imaging the army suppressing free speech? These military bases are not supposed to be political supporters of one point of view. And even though they said Palin could not give a speech, she can only sign her book, (which now is on sale for $4.97),  Ft. Bragg has decided to allow “limited” media access. So let’s see,  IF Sarah Palin really reads, we know she would allow, NewsMax, The Frontiersman, FOX, The Weekly Standard, National Review to her party bus, (don’t ya find it funny Palin could not even think of the Bible when Couric asked her for a list?).
Shame on Ft. Bragg for using their army base to suppress the media and also the rights their soldiers are fighting for.